Printers are useful for producing printed images of a wide range of types. Printers print on receivers (or “imaging substrates”), such as pieces or sheets of paper or other planar media, glass, fabric, metal, or other objects.
Printers typically operate using subtractive color: a substantially reflective receiver is overcoated image-wise with separations of cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), black (K), and other colorants, one at a time.
In various printers, receiver sheets are transported by a transport web through a plurality of printing modules. Each printing module deposits a single separation on the receiver. In such printers, several receiver sheets are typically present on the transport web or belt simultaneously. For example, a five-station printer can transport five sheets on the web simultaneously, with one sheet being printed in each module at any given time. More or fewer sheets can be accommodated on the web simultaneously depending on the spacing between printing modules and the speed of the web.